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Monthly Archives: February 2012

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Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, will serve as national co-chairs of the re-election campaign of President Obama, it was announced today.
They are among 100 national co-chairs selected by the Obama for America campaign across the country.
“They will serve as ambassadors for the President, advise the campaign on key issues, and help engage and mobilize voters in all 50 states. The President’s National Co-Chairs will be tremendous assets on the ground as we build the biggest grassroots campaign in history,” said Jim Messina, Obama for America Campaign Manager.
Villaraigosa was a national co-chair for Villaraigosa in his first campaign and was recently named chair of the DNC Convention to be held in Charlotte this summer.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will drill about 30 new wells deep below the San Fernando Valley next month to better define a toxic underground chemical plume that regulators admit they still don’t understand. Melissa Pamer in the Daily Hews

The EPA will install the groundwater wells to monitor for chromium-6, or hexavalent chromium, the metal pollutant that environmental crusader Erin Brockovich famously helped expose in Hinkley.

At a cost of more than $3 million, the new wells are intended to give EPA scientists an improved understanding of where hexavalent chromium can be found – with the intent of guiding future cleanup efforts.

Amid political infighting, the citizens commission reviewing Los Angeles City Council boundaries is scheduled to take one last vote today on a disputed map that imposes sharp changes on San Fernando Valley and inner-city neighborhoods. Daily News

The meeting, at 4 p.m. in City Council chambers, is the last step before submitting the maps to the Council, which has a July 1 deadline for the 2013 election.

While the City Council may make changes, there is a likelihood that the map will be the subject of legal action by two Council members, Bernard Parks and Jan Perry, or by a civil rights group.

More than 80 years after their predecessors helped push people of Mexican descent out of Los Angeles County, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to issue a formal apology.Christina Villacorte in the Daily News,

Supervisor Gloria Molina called on the board to apologize for the fact that the county helped “round up people” during the Mexican Repatriation from 1929 through 1944.

“United States citizens and legal residents were separated from their families and country and were deprived of their livelihood and United States constitutional rights, and many were never reunited with their families,” Molina said in her motion.

After more than a decade of delays, the first phase of the controversial Newhall Ranch development is projected to break ground in late 2013 or early 2014, after the Board of Supervisors gave the project its final approval on Tuesday. Christina Villacorte in the Daily News.

“Our plans have been thoroughly reviewed and analyzed, and we’re pleased that we’re now in a position to move forward,” said Marlee Lauffer, vice president of communications for Newhall Land.

The board gave the go-ahead to build Landmark Village, the first of five communities intended to make up the 12,000-acre Newhall Ranch development near the Interstate 5 and State Route 126 freeways.

The second phase of the project, Mission Village, is also expected to receive final approval over the next few weeks.